This book highlights the roles of several individual difference (ID) variables on the language learning process, exploring them from both the students' and the teachers' perspectives. It presents the results of a large-scale, mixed-methods investigation which was conducted with secondary school pupils and their teachers in Hungary. The…

Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE) refers to individual's learning endeavor occurring in out-of-class environments in a naturalistic way independent from the requirements of a formal education program including assessment. Learners' IDLE experiences in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts are quite important to understand their…

This book uncovers the important issues in language learning and teaching in the intelligent, digital era. "Social connectivity" is a contemporary style of learning and living. By engaging in the connectivity of physical and digital worlds, how essential parts of language learning and teaching can be achieved? How can the advanced…

For language teaching, the early 1970s marked a break from the behaviorist hold of audio-lingualism and a new perspective derived from cognitive code psychology and Chomskian linguistics swept the profession. The wave of methods born of this perspective predominated for a decade. In general, the 1980s have had less to offer language teachers in…

Beginning students of English as a second language want to have a natural use of the language to get things done, express thoughts, and get information. Most English learners have to invent an interlanguage to express time, because most language courses focus only on the present tense at first. A cyclical approach to grammar instruction allows the…

Total Physical Response is a strategy for learning second languages developed by James J. Asher. The Tomatis program, developed in France by Alfred Tomatis, is a method for treating dyslexia and communication problems and is also used for teaching basic elements of foreign languages. Suggestology is a psychotherapeutic system based on yogic…

A discussion of the process of learning to write in a second language (L2) looks at how theory and research on first language (L1) composition and L2 acquisition influence the study of L2 composition. Three perspectives are examined: (1) the approach to writing that focuses on the text itself, including comparison of native L1 and L2 rhetorical…

Language teachers are encouraged to find innovative ways to teach vocabulary, particularly illustrating the relationships between words and spatial and temporal relationships in meaning. The concept of the teachable moment is also discussed briefly. (MSE)

A discussion of the Total Physical Response method of second language instruction places the concept within the context of other unconventional language learning methods, reviews the rationale behind the approach, and outlines the classroom procedures used. A sampling of useful commands for classroom use is included. (19 references) (MSE)

Communication strategies are defined and a brief inventory of strategies for learning and oral interaction in a foreign language instruction setting is provided. Learning strategies are viewed as methods for exploiting available information to increase the efficiency of second language learning. The integration of learning strategies into the…

Discusses belief that foreign language teachers, with help and cooperation from better language learners, can help less successful students increase their competency. Teachers must take student personality and cognition variables into account. (Author/BK)

Three studies of the development of gender competence in elementary and intermediate level learners of French as a second language are reported. The findings support an emerging rule-governed process of gender assignment related to the learner's development of skill with the language's underlying phonological system. (11 references) (MSE)

Discusses the use of the term "communicative" in describing approaches to foreign- or second-language teaching. Suggests that a distinction should be drawn between informal communicative approaches which promote second-language acquisition and formal communicative approaches which promote conscious learning. Examines conditions for achieving both…

At times, the whole-language approach to language teaching has been misunderstood. It is a philosophy more than a method or an instructional trend and is more than its separate elements: thematic, authentic, integrated, interactive. Many teachers who embrace the philosophy underlying the approach see their teaching not as promoting whole-language…

Argues for an alternative to the conventional linear model of language acquisition in the learning of second-language grammar, proposing a more organic approach. The two approaches are contrasted, drawing on research in second-language learning and discourse analysis that supports the organic view. Some pedagogical implications of this approach…